(Note: donations this week are only $20 from triggering a bonus post, largely thanks to Chris in the Carolinas, so if you’re thinking about putting something in the tip jar, this is a good week to try to trigger Saturday post! Also, I should let you all know that today’s the launch day for Slow Seduction, book 2 in my heterosexual BDSM romance series! It’s out in paperback, ebook, and audio all at once! -ctan)
—
You know, I didn’t think I was particularly attracted to Mitch Moreland, but the second he said the word “fuck” it was like a magic word that turned him from a frog to a prince. Not that he wasn’t attractive before. Mitch is cute in a sax player kind of way. But I hadn’t allowed myself to see him that way until abra cadabra.
I know, I know, a few minutes earlier I’d been whining about how there should be rules and one of them should be no fucking your bandmates. There were a million reasons why not. Drama could ensue. Professional standards. Ethics.
But when you’re the only two English-speaking gay men in the whole prefecture, so far as you know, and you’re horny, then trust me, all of a sudden it makes totally perfectly logical sense to hook up.
We wasted no time in stripping each other’s clothes off at the foot of the bed. Pretty much the entire negotiation of boundaries consisted of Mitch saying, “Promise me it won’t get weird after this,” and me answering, “No reason it should.”
And pretty much the entire negotiation of safe sex boiled down to this:
Mitch: How many condoms do we have between us?
Me: Um…
Mitch: I have one. Okay if I do you, then?
Me: Sure.
I don’t know if all sax players have oral fixations or what but he went down on me for what was definitely a long time, used his spit for lube, and did me face down on the edge of the bed. He wasn’t a big guy in either sense which suited me fine.
When we were done I said, “You don’t have to rush off unless you feel it would be weird to cuddle.”
“Move the fuck over,” he said, and I climbed all the way onto the bed and he lay down next to me. “Thanks.”
“Likewise.” Now that I had empty balls, I felt a lot better. “Whew. I needed that.”
“Yeah.”
I think we both dozed off for a minute or two.
Then he said, “I was going to try to hold out until Australia. But this was better.”
I opened my eyes and for a moment the ceiling of the room looked like the ceiling of any hotel room anywhere in the world. “What’s in Australia?”
“Everything. Sydney has an insanely huge gay pride parade.”
“How huge is insanely huge?”
“Ten thousand march and a hundred thousand spectators, I’ve heard.”
“Jeezus.”
“Yeah. Plus they speak English. Bars. Cruise spots. You name it, they’ve got it.”
“Good to know. You know any bars in particular?”
“I’ve got a list. There was one place in Tokyo, went there the first night here when I was jetlagged and couldn’t sleep.”
I turned to look at him. “How extensive is this list?”
“Forty or fifty cities. Mostly in the US of course.” He was still looking at the ceiling but he talked with his hands which meant he held them up above his face. “A couple in Canada, UK, Germany–”
“You really plan ahead.”
“You don’t?”
I pointed out that if I did, I would’ve had a condom, which made him laugh. I resolved to make sure I kept some in my road cases from then on. He agreed to take me along if he went out in Sydney. We’d have a couple of days there, after all.
We dozed off again. I woke up feeling sticky.
“Are you the shower afterward type?” I asked.
“I’ll soap your back if you soap mine,” he said.
Sensible. While we were toweling off afterward, though, I asked him the one potentially awkward question in my mind. “So what did Cray say to you?”
He tossed it off nonchalantly, doing a credible job of Cray’s clipped, not-quite-Southern accent. “‘Daron could use some company.'”
“‘Daron could use some company?'”
“Yeah. Just like that. I figured there was at least a 50/50 chance that he meant what I hoped he meant. Or at least that you meant what I hoped he meant.”
“Glad he ran into you then.”
“Me too.” He hung his towel on the rack. “Are you the kissy type?”
“Not really.” At least, not after a recreational fuck like this one.
“Good. My lip got a little overworked in the show tonight.” He patted his lower jaw. “Hey, do you know what time we’re leaving tomorrow?”
As if on cue, a piece of paper came sliding under the door. In damp, bare feet I went and picked it up. “According to this, we’re on the 11am Shinkansen to… Fuck-you-okay?”
He burst out laughing as he reached for his clothes on the floor. “What?”
“Says so right here.” I showed him the itinerary that said our final show in Japan was in the city of Fukuoka. Fuck you, okay?
“Why so it does.” He pulled his jeans on, holding his briefs wadded up in his hand.
At the door he said, “Thanks, again.”
“Right back atcha. See you in the morning.”
He gave me one of those little “see you” points from the corner of his eye with his index finger and sailed out the door.
He was whistling merrily as he went down the hallway. I felt about the same. I checked the clock. Huh. It was probably a good time to call Carynne, so I did.
“Tell me something,” I said when she picked up the phone. “Do I make sex into a much bigger issue than it has to be?”
“Yes,” she said. “Hey, I was hoping you’d call. I have good news and bad news.”
My heart jumped into my throat as I suddenly worried it was something about Ziggy. But then, I thought, she wouldn’t be so flip or calm if something had happened to him.
“The good news is that my gamble paid off.”
“What gamble?”
“I sank ten thou into a new, Christmas-themed Candlelight video and all the stations are playing the crap out of it. Watt stickered the old single with some kind of holiday sticker and we’ve sold through nearly all the old inventory that was lying around.”
“How much inventory was that?”
“Over 50,000 units. I was amazed they were still around. BNC won’t admit it, yet, but I’m sure that means Prone to Relapse has moved a ton of units, too.”
I lay back down on the bed. I wondered if it was intentional on Mitch’s part or merely convenient that fucking on the edge of the bed left no wet spot. “Okay, but how does that affect the sales of 1989?”
“It probably doesn’t. But it does, A) clear out the back stock of that single which they were claiming was a liability, B) pull in a metric ton more publishing revenue for us, C) royalties on the single.”
“I thought we weren’t going to see another dime in royalties until 1989 earned out.”
“This is the brilliant part. Those singles in inventory belonged to Charles River. It’s complicated but it boils down to they don’t count in that basket.”
“That’s a major major coup, then, Car’. That’s excellent!” I wondered if that pulled in enough for a year of Courtney to go to Emerson. Or for us to re-carpet the basement. “But what’s the bad news?”
“The bad news is they’re suing us. Notice came yesterday afternoon at 5pm. Feinblum’s filing the countersuit as we speak.”
“Shit.”
“He still thinks they’ll back down. I told him our goal is reduction of monetary outlay. He’s keeping it in mind.” She yawned. “But how are you? How’s Japan?”
“Japan is awesome. We stayed overnight at a hot tub resort.”
“Hot tub resort?”
“Hot springs, I should say. I sent you a postcard but I’ll probably be home before it.”
“Cool. How’s Remo?”
“He’s all right. I saw him taking the cast off part of the day today, anyway, so I think that’s a good sign. Not like he talks about it.”
“Of course. How’s my uncle.”
“Ornery as always. I told him I’d say hi, though.”
“Tell him hi back.”
This was the moment when we should have said goodbye. Instead I sat there in silence, working up the nerve to ask her one more thing.
She was ahead of me. “No, I haven’t heard anything from Zig,” she said, before I could open my mouth.
“I had a thought,” I blurted out. “His mom. She’s in a home or something? Do you know where? Which one?”
“I can find that out easily enough.”
“I wonder if she’s heard from him.”
“That’s an excellent question. I’ll get right on that. After this conference call I have with the merchandisers. Gotta go, honeycakes.”
“All right. Love you, Car.”
“Love you, too, D.”
And then I was out of energy, out of drive, out of emotions, and I slept like a rock.
—
(This is the 1989 “reworking” of the original song, basically a remix where they mixed down the keyboards a little–and edited the former keyboard player out of the video–plus made the video 100% percent gothier than the original. -ctan)
(P.S. I’m doing a livechat on uStream tonight 8p-10p eastern time to talk about Slow Seduction and anything else people want to text, IM, or ask! Drop my my ustream channel if you’d like to! http://www.ustream.tv/channel/cecilia-tan)
11 Comments
Congrats on your book release, ctan. Loved the first one. I’m sure I’ll love this one, too.
Hope so. 🙂 It’s the middle book of a trilogy so I always worry it’s the “soft” middle, you know?
There is nothing ‘soft’ about this book. Edgy. Smexy, but definitely not soft!
Heh. I guess you could say it’s as hard as glass. 😉
LOL
1. How do i bookmark these last few posts so that I’ll remember how well you deliver when I feel like things are draggy, Ctan?
2. Is the lawsuit the same legal trouble as before or is this the use of the name ‘Moondog Three’?
Grin. Sometimes I go to eleven.
Lawsuit is the same troubles as before, which boil down to the record company being dicks, but here’s the actual essence of it: The ostensible excuse is that the band owes the record company money for tour support and other expenses that the band claims the record company agreed to pay irregardless of how the album sold. (The prelude to the lawsuit was the company sending them a bill.) Feinblum’s warning not to use the Moondog name was all about not giving the record co. any additional excuses to sue them.
I forgot how much I miss Carynne. Not as much as I miss Ziggy, but I miss the whole crew. I feel homesick and it’s not even my home.
And congrats on the new book being released. Can’t wait till the whole trilogy is out.
Daron’s homesick and yet somehow he’s restless, too!
Book 3 (Slow Satisfaction) is scheduled for August 26, 2014–can’t wait until folks can read the entire trilogy. Until then I just have to keep my mouth shut about spoilers. 🙂
The ease with which Carynne sold the Candlelight records makes me even more sure that the record company is derelict. Amongst other, all negative adjectives that I could use.
Well, to be fair, BNC didn’t have any incentive to sell that inventory. Technically they didn’t own it, Charles River did, plus it was singles, which aren’t high price and aren’t “long tail.” And to do what she did, they would have had to spend the same $10K with no guarantee that MTV and the other video outlets would even play the video, when they would be making a very small margin on the eventual sales if there were any.
Which doesn’t mean you’re not 100% right that they’re derelict and many other words it would be really fucking impolite to say.